


What didn't kill you

by redbrickrose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol as a Coping Mechanism, Angst, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Case Fic, Castiel Makes a Deal with The Shadow (Supernatural), Castiel and Dean Winchester Need to Use Their Words, Dean Winchester's deep-seated abandonment issues, Demisexual Castiel (Supernatural), Depression, Everybody Lives, First Time, Found Family, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Permanent Injury, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Roadtrip, Season/Series 15, Slow Burn, really a whole parade of untreated mental health issues, well as slow as possible given the current state of canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:14:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26490235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbrickrose/pseuds/redbrickrose
Summary: Dean’s plans for the future have always been pipe dreams and bravado. He kind of abstractly wanted to live through this - whatever Cas or Sam thinks or accuses him of, he didn’t want to die; he just expected to.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 73
Kudos: 299
Collections: The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	What didn't kill you

**Author's Note:**

> Look, this fic is a pile of angst. But also, 2020 is a hellscape none of us can escape from, and fuck it, everybody lives. 
> 
> I do not vouch for the medical accuracy of anything in this fic. Just go with it.
> 
> There's a [soundtrack](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/72j1zSLqU5Pxphlx0OEJdB) if you're into that kind of thing.
> 
> [Rebloggable version](https://redbrickrose.tumblr.com/post/629524616640118785/fic-what-didnt-kill-you)

Sam and Eileen elope on a Monday, about two months after the world doesn’t end.

It's sudden and impulsive, but not surprising. They decide that morning, standing in the kitchen over coffee, but Dean’s been waiting for it, or something like it. Sam was always the better of the two of them at envisioning a future.

It’s quick and utilitarian because the trappings of religion can fuck off forever, but it’s mostly symbolic all the same. Dean’s not sure it’s legally binding; everyone involved is legally dead and counterfeit last names are on the marriage certificate, but he goes to the courthouse with them as a witness and signs his real name in an illegible scrawl underneath his printed alias so that it feels authentic.

They both start using Kennedy, Eileen’s mother’s maiden name, and that’s weird to get used to, but why shouldn’t they? Maybe the Winchester family curse breaks if Dean’s the end of line.

It feels a little like closure, too, the good kind, a step forward. It’s just that Dean’s never really trusted closure. It never really works like it’s supposed to - after all those years and all that pain, Chuck is just gone; Heaven and Hell are sealed, it’s _over_ ; they’re _free_ and everybody lives? No way it’s that easy.

(Dean said that to Cas, once, and Cas, newly human and still sweating out the fever of his burned out grace, had just blinked at Dean blearily from the nest he’d made of every spare blanket in the bunker and said, “Your life has been very challenging, and I don’t think you have a normal definition of ‘easy’,” before passing out again.

Which, fair.)

Rowena and Jack go to the fancy bakery to get a celebratory cake while the rest of them are at the courthouse, and Jody and Donna bring the girls down that night. Cas manages to limp into the kitchen to participate and complain that the fondant flowers taste like rubbery disappointment. 

It’s a party. 

Dean claps Sam on the shoulder and gives an impromptu best man toast. The whole time he feels a little bit like he’s watching his family from outside of himself and from a distance.

\---

After everything - Lucifer and Michael’s sword and Chuck and destiny and loss, it’s Amara who saved them all, in a stunning reversal of Chuck saving them from Amara all those years ago. Dean guesses he shouldn’t be surprised - narrative symmetry and all that. The patterns are there when you look for them, in a way that might always fuck him up when he thinks about it too hard.

Amara got Chuck through the portal (to fucking somewhere, to build a new universe from scratch to ruin; Dean doesn’t give a shit), and she laid out everything needed to make sure the door was shut and locked behind them. No mark this time; no Ma’lak boxes; no, this time all they needed was the grace of an archangel, the grace of nephilim, and all the power of the ruler of Hell, freely given. 

That’s all. Just things they happened to have lying around. 

So maybe Rowena, Jack, Michael, and Adam saved them, and Dean’s grateful in a way that’s almost incapacitating, when he feels something other than emptied out and exhausted. 

And if it also means that Heaven and Hell are sealed now, that the whole universe is “closed to the divine” (according to Donatello) and that every demon was spontaneously exorcised (good) and every angel left on Earth had their grace burned out of them from the inside (not good), well. No one told them that part, but cosmic consequences. Is there any other kind?

Smiting sickness is a bitch, but a few weeks in it became apparent that Cas was going to pull through and the suffocating pressure in Dean’s chest unclenched a little. Cas is alive; Rowena and Jack are alive - in Rowena’s case, arguably an improvement, though she can’t as much as levitate a feather anymore. Adam fucked off with a powerless Michael somehow still living in his head, but left a phone number and a forwarding address; there’s an open door there, which is more than Dean ever would have expected and more than they deserve.

Everybody’s human. Everybody _lives_ , and now they just have to figure out how. 

Dean’s waiting for the catch.

\---

It’s not that anything is _wrong_ , really. Things are better than he ever would have hoped. It’s just that he never really thought this far ahead. 

Dean’s plans for the future have always been pipe dreams and bravado. He kind of abstractly wanted to live through this - whatever Cas or Sam thinks or accuses him of, he didn’t want to die; he just expected to. Deep down, he never believed he _would_ live through it, not really, and now that he has, he can’t get a handle on it, can’t find the rhythm of a life.

**_There are nights like:_ **

Donna and Jody bring the girls down and Claire, Kaia, and Jack take a bottle of whisky and sneak into the archives to play a drinking game they’ve dubbed “curse roulette” with the objects that haven’t made it through Sam’s inventory yet. 

Dean doesn’t totally understand the rules, but gathers it has a component of poker, and a component of truth or dare, and teenagers will be teenagers, and living through near literal hell may just make them feel even more reckless and invincible. 

When Dean and Jody find them, they’re wasted and pouring through journals trying to identify the symbols on an old wooden box Dean wouldn’t open for all the booze or money in the world. 

Claire reminds him there are no demons anymore, and assures him they know better than to actually read the symbols out loud. 

The kids make Dean feel so old.

**_There are nights like:_ **

Patience and Alex come down by themselves to work with Rowena on harnessing Patience’s natural power and learning cures for supernatural afflictions that they don’t teach in medical school. They’re up all night in the garden on the full moon, and in the morning Dean finds them in the kitchen grinding herbs Rowena swears will speed the healing of any supernatural wound. She’s leaning against the counter sipping her tea and watching them with quiet pride over the rim of her mug.

“You’re a good teacher,” Dean says. It surprises him a little, how patient and thorough she is. He’d never have described her as “nurturing” before. And if you’d told him even a few years ago he would have a coven forming under his nose, he’d have told you to get stuffed.

Rowena shrugs, and looks at him out of the corner of her eye. “Those who can’t do, teach,” she says, self-deprecating and sardonic.

**_There are nights like:_ **

They’re watching old horror movies and Eileen falls asleep with her head in Sam’s lap halfway through _The Evil Dead_. Cas comes in with another round of beers and distributes them before settling back on the floor, leaning against Dean’s chair. Dean squeezes his shoulder in thanks, and when he turns, Sam is just watching them, carding his fingers through Eileen’s hair. Sam quirks an eyebrow when their eyes meet, and Dean turns back to the movie.

**_There are nights like:_ **

Garth and Bess come to visit, and Dean makes burgers and pie from scratch. They break out a few bottles of what he assumes is good wine from the old Men of Letters cellar and sit around the table for hours, just talking. Dean goes to bed after midnight, feeling warm, and full, and hazy, and still a little lost.

**_There are nights like:_ **

Dean’s at the bar with Cas and Rowena. Rowena’s three drinks in and predatory with it, making eyes at some hot asshole in a cowboy hat at the bar. Cas is matching Dean drink-for-drink and lilting a little against Dean’s shoulder, warm and sweaty where they’re pressed together.

Neither of them has a handle on mortal human alcohol tolerance, and they both drink too much and all the time. Dean doesn’t say anything because he might be a hypocrite, but he’s a self-aware one.

Rowena pulls her braid over her shoulder and looks up at them before cutting her eyes to the bar, all long eyelashes and shadows. For a second in the low light her eyes flash violet and she looks like the Queen of Hell and then it’s gone, a trick of the light. She winks at them and downs the rest of her drink, sliding out of the booth and straightening her form-fitting black dress. 

“You’re buying,” she says, “don’t wait up, boys.” She pauses, and turns back to them, narrowing her eyes. “And maybe - _try_ \- to have a little fun yourselves?”

Dean watches her go. “She’s going to eat him alive,” he says, low in Cas’s ear. Cas laughs and leans closer. Over his head, Dean catches the eye of a brunette at the bar, but turns away when she smiles. His old definitions of “fun” seem like too much work.

**_There are nights like:_ **

He goes to the bar by himself and puts the work in anyway. An out-of-towner smiles at him just right over their beer (never a local, not in Lebanon) and he goes back to the woman’s hotel room or the bed of the dude’s truck, parked out an old dirt road. It’s fun in the moment, but it doesn’t last, and he drives home in the Impala feeling hollowed out. 

**_There are nights like:_ **

Cas goes home with a woman from the bar. Dean did not anticipate this, though maybe he should have.

He doesn’t stay up waiting, but he stays up _reading_ until around 3 am when he hears the heavy echo of the bunker door slam closed.

Cas sleeps in the next morning, and when he stumbles into the kitchen after Sam leaves on his run, Dean is waiting.

Not waiting. Drinking coffee. Reading.

Cas pours himself a cup of coffee and slumps down in the seat across from Dean, making a “go ahead" gesture. His hair is a mess, and he’s in one of Dean’s old t-shirts; something in Dean’s gut clenches. They stare at each other for a moment, and then Dean breaks.

“How was it?” He asks. He’s not jealous, not really. He’s proud a little bit, in a fucked up, self-defeating kind of way. Cas deserves human experiences, and this is part of that, if it’s something that he wants. So Dean’s not jealous, but he is terrified, that it _is_ something Cas wants, some slice of human normalcy in all of this.

Cas sighs. “Overrated.”

“Overrated? Are you sure you’re doing it right?” he asks, and winces a little the second it leaves his mouth. It’s supposed to be a joke, the way he’d tease Sam, but it comes out dismissive, and more than a little sleazy.

Cas raises one eyebrow, deeply unimpressed. “I’ve witnessed a wide variety of human sexual acts since before your species had language. Yes, I think I understand the mechanics.”

“Your species now too, bud,” Dean corrects. That seems important in this moment.

“ _Our_ species,” Cas acknowledges with a nod of concession. “And it was fine. She was kind and it was enjoyable and I didn’t get stabbed afterward.” Dean flinches at that, but if Cas catches it, he doesn’t let on. 

Cas shrugs. “But it seems like a lot of work for someone you’ll never see again. I don’t really understand the appeal of having that kind of intimacy be so fleeting, when you don’t know the other person and can’t really tell them anything real. I was curious. When I was an angel, I didn’t really understand what you get out of that type of liaison, though you seem to enjoy it. I thought maybe I would feel differently now.”

Dean just blinks at him. “But you don’t.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.” Dean shifts, fiddling with the placemat and the corner of the notebook Sam left open on the table

“Okay,” Cas says softly, eyeing Dean over the top of his coffee mug.

If Cas ever goes home with anyone again, he doesn’t do it where Dean can see.

**_There are nights like:_ **

Dean can’t sleep and goes to the kitchen, where he finds Sam and Eileen, kissing against the counter, warm and intimate. He backs out of the room before they can notice him.

**_There are nights like:_ **

Dean can’t sleep and he finds Cas reading in the library. They sit in companionable silence until the sun comes up.

**_There are nights like:_ **

Dean can’t sleep and he lies awake for hours, just watching the shadows on the walls of his bedroom, and telling himself they don’t look like anything.

**_There are nights like:_ **

Dean dreams of fire, of darkness at the bottom of the ocean, of Mary’s eyes, of the imprint of wings burned across the dirt, and wakes up shaking.

\---

Dean’s not sure when the bunker turned back into Hunter Headquarters. It must have been gradual, but people are in and out and back and forth until what it feels like is that he wakes up one day and finds Bobby and a cluster of faces he only barely recognizes around the kitchen table. Jody and Claire are in the gym teaching Jack and another teenage boy he definitely doesn’t recognize the finer points of vamp staking. Rowena’s in the library with Patience going over meticulous spell setup, now that she’s as limited to elaborate rituals for spell casting as the rest of them. Dean just wanted a fucking cup of coffee.

He finds Sam hunched over his laptop at the map table and drops down heavily into the seat next to him.

“Hey,” Sam says, not looking up.

“Hey. Why are there baby hunters staking dummy vamps in the basement?”

Sam shrugs and squints and his computer, making a quick note in the open notebook next to him. “Nasty vamp nest, out in South Carolina. Jack and Derek want to go, but Jack’s still a little shaky without his powers and Derek’s so new. I trust Claire and Jody, but we still need to get their confidence up.” Dean does not say _who the fuck is Derek_ or _Did Cas okay Jack going vampire hunting_ because while those are both pertinent questions, they’re not really the point at this exact moment.

He drums his fingers against the table and then tries again. “Did we start hunting again?”

Sam does look up at him then, putting his pen down on the notebook and curling his fingers over the edge of it. “Did we stop?”

“I just mean…” Dean cuts himself off, because he’s not sure what he means. Explicitly, no, they didn’t. But they _won_ ; Chuck’s gone - _demons_ are gone, and he’s been trying to figure out what to do with himself. He’s relieved and free and completely directionless and a little bit baffled that Sam can just...go on.

Sam softens, and leans forward a little. “Dean, you don’t have to hunt. You don’t have to do anything. Eileen and I aren’t really hunting, and I’m not in any hurry to get back out there, but I think someone still should. There’s still work to do.There’s still so much we don’t know about this place - the records, the artifacts. Now that there’s finally time to go through it, I just… I want to _know_ , you know? If I can help coordinate, and if there are resources here for other hunters, it just seems like that’s a good next step. Mia says that it’s good to have work that feels valuable, and I just feel like...we didn’t have the hunter community growing up, but it is a community and maybe we should have. Maybe we’d have been less isolated. If I can help give that to people now, I think it’s what I want to do.”

Oh, _Mia_ says. Of course she does. Sam goes to tele-therapy twice a week now, so that’s a whole thing.

Dean shrugs. “Yeah, I’m just saying. For a guy who wanted out of the life so badly, this is the opposite of that.”

“That was fifteen years ago, Dean. A lot has changed since then.”

“Amelia.”

“That was eight years ago, Dean.”

“Still. I didn’t think you wanted this.”

Sam pauses for a moment and then says, “I think...maybe I just wanted a choice? I’m _in_ the life. I married a hunter. I’m not gonna go stalking Djinn for fun or anything, but there’s good to be done. We can take what the Men of Letters were trying to do, and make it better, more nuanced. I mean, we have friends who are werewolves. My therapist is a shapeshifter. One of my best friends is a witch. Saving people, hunting things, the way we were raised...it’s not black and white. We know things other people don’t know, and...we really have something to contribute here.” He sits back in his chair and says, more gently, “You know, this doesn’t mean you have to do anything, right? You have a choice too.”

Right. Because the “we” in the last half of that statement was Sam and Eileen. Still weird.

“Right,” Dean says and pushes himself out of his chair to go find coffee and maybe talk to Cas about the Jack thing.

\---

Conveniently, he finds both coffee and Cas in the kitchen, luckily without Bobby and crew. Cas is leaning against the sink with a bottle of water, in a tracksuit, sweaty from a run. He wears tracksuits now, and he runs, possibly more than Sam does. 

For a while there, after he lost his grace, he sat in his room and stared at the walls, and Dean was a little afraid he wasn’t going to get up again at all. Then, when he finally did, he got all the way up and went to the gym until he learned to throw a punch with new human muscles and to the shooting range until he could hit a bullseye and now there’s jogging. Dean doesn’t hate it, but it’s a whole new world. The normal clothes, the flex of Cas’s bicep, the line of his throat as he swallows - it all still hasn’t stopped doing weird things to Dean’s insides.

Dean pours himself a cup of coffee and blurts out, “Did you know Jack’s going vampire hunting?” before taking a sip.

Cas blinks at him and sets his water bottle down on the counter. “Good morning, Dean.”

Dean swallows. “Morning. Vampire hunting?”

Cas shrugs. “He told me.”

“He’s a hunter now?”

“If he wants to be.”

“You’re okay with this?”

“He’s been through worse.”

“Yeah, he had super powers at the time.”

Cas looks up at Dean sharply. “I don’t...think I can really tell Jack how to be human when I haven’t figured it out myself. If he wants to hunt, he will. I’d rather he was trained and with people we trust, wouldn’t you?”

That’s logical, and Dean hates it anyway. Jack’s as headstrong as Claire, in his own way - less openly defiant, but way more likely to just nod and smile and then do whateverthefuck he wants anyway. 

Gee. Wonder where he got that. 

“Yeah, ok.”

Cas sighs and rolls his eyes. “Look, I obviously don’t love it. But I understand _why_. We talked about it. He doesn’t feel like he can just pick and get a job or go to college, or whatever; if this gives him a purpose, I don’t…” he trails off, then adds, “We’re all just feeling our way through this, right?” 

Yeah. Right.

\---

Dean spends another month in his room, avoiding most of the bustle of the bunker. He watches movies with Cas. He asks Sam and Rowena polite questions about the artifacts they spend their days digging out of the storage room and lovingly cataloging. He teaches Jack to play pool.

(He lies in bed until noon. He keeps a bottle of whiskey next to the bed).

One day in late April he finds Sam and Eileen at the map table, bent over Sam’s laptop and signing rapidly to each other. It’s way too fast for Dean, and he feels a little bit like a shit brother-in-law for not having picked up more by now, but he catches a few things - _ghost_ and _hunt_ , specifically.

He leans his hip against one of the chairs, folding his arms across his chest and says, “Put me in, Coach.”

Sam looks up, a little startled, and looking a little disappointed when he sees Dean’s face. “What?”

“I said, I’ll take the hunt.” He does his best to sign that last part, because he’s trying.

Sam narrows his eyes. “I thought you were taking a break.”

Dean’s thrown a little bit because he wasn’t so much taking a break as losing all track of time passing, but sure, if that’s what you want to call it.

“It’s been six months. I didn’t _retire_ , Sammy.” And he didn’t, or at least not intentionally, though admittedly he hasn’t done much of anything with any real intention for a while now. “It’s a ghost, right? Salt and burn. I’ll be back by dinner.”

“It’s in Montana.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Ok, so I’ll be back in a week.” Maybe that’s exactly what he needs - Baby and the radio; long, hypnotic stretches of highway and a good adrenaline rush at the end of the line to jolt some sense of momentum back into him and clear out the restless buzzing under his skin.

Sam still doesn’t look happy. Eileen puts her hand on his forearm. “Things are quiet here,” she says. “Why don’t you go too? Might be a good break.” They share a Look. Dean hates being fucking _handled_.

Sam shrugs. “Yeah, I can wrap this up. We’ll leave in the morning?” 

Dean scoffs and waves him off. “I don’t need a baby-sitter, Sammy. You stay here and manage the hunter army. I just need to get out of here for a bit; send me the info while I pack.”

What? Like, Dean can’t salt and burn a ghost on his own?

Apparently not, because Cas is leaning against Baby when Dean gets to the garage about an hour later. He’s wearing one of Dean’s old flannels rolled up to the elbow and the jeans he bought on the last Walmart run that hug the curve of his thighs. Dean’s not sure how you even find jeans that fit that well at Walmart, but that’s what happens when you let Rowena come shopping. The effect is something Dean is still adjusting to.

When Dean unlocks the car, Cas slings his duffle into the back seat and slides into the passenger side. “Sam says there’s a haunting in Montana?”

“It’s a milk run,” Dean says, sliding behind the wheel and shifting sideways to look at Cas. “I just need to blow off some steam. You don’t have to come.”

Cas smiles, a little wry. “You’re not the only one tired of staring at the walls of the bunker.”

“You sure you’re feeling up to it?” 

Cas raises an eyebrow. “One of us goes running every day and one of us eats pizza.”

“You know that’s not what I meant. It’s got to be weird without…” he gestures to indicate _the ability to smite someone by looking at them_.

Cas shrugs. “It’s a milk run.”

Touche.

\---

It’s a milk run. It’s a two-day haul to get out there, mostly spent in the companionable silence of the blaring radio. It’s another two to verify Sam’s assumptions about some old bastard haunting his kids for trying to sell the family ranch, and one more kicking around a one stoplight town waiting for nightfall and some good old-fashioned grave digging. There’s one tense moment where the ghost pops up and throws Dean against a tree right before Cas drops the lighter, but is it even a hunt if no one gets body slammed into a wall or a tree?

Cas hovers around him as he gets to his feet, and Dean can feel Cas watching him as he limps back to the car, a low ache in his right hip that he knows is going to turn into a nasty bruise over the next few days. 

“Are you okay?” Cas asks, eyeing him warily from the passenger seat, and Dean shifts because he can’t really get comfortable with the pain shooting up his right side. 

Of course he’s fine, but it also hurts like a motherfucker. It’s the kind of thing that’s happened to him probably hundreds of times, and it’s an injury he’d have shaken off at twenty, but that now he’s going to feel for weeks.

“Yeah, it’s nothing. I’ve had way worse.” He cracks a smile in Cas’s direction, but it falls a little flat when Cas just scowls at him as if to indicate just how low _that_ bar is.

They get burgers on the way back to the motel, and Cas sits at the rickety table by the window picking at his while Dean claims first shower. He turns it up to scalding and stands under the spray a little longer than usual, hoping the stinging heat will ease some of the ache in his muscles, and only gets out when he does so there’s some hot water left for Cas. He can be considerate.

The motel is their usually flop, a ways off the highway past the nicer Days Inns and even the Motel Eights. His back is already protesting the last few nights on the thin mattress and after a night of grave digging and the ghost encounter, his hip is not going to thank him in the morning. 

When he comes back into the room in worn sweatpants and old t-shirt (he may be too old for grave digging, but he’s definitely too old to sleep in his jeans), Cas hasn’t moved, and God, Dean is tired and he _hurts_ , but he also doesn’t like the expression on Cas’s face.

“Hey, are _you_ okay?” he asks, easing himself down on the side of Cas’s bed next to the table. Cas starts, and looks up at him, a little caught. That’s still weird too. Dean never really used to be able to startle him.

There’s not much space between the bed and the table, and when Cas turns to face him, their knees brush.

“I’m fine,” Cas says. He looks down at his hands. “I just forgot back there. For a minute.”

“Forgot?” 

Cas quirks a smile, but there’s no humor in it. “My grace.” He closes his eyes, briefly, and when he opens them again, there’s fire there. “It’s like an amputation,” he says, fiercely. 

“Oh.” Dean’s thrown a little by that, and kicking himself. This is Cas’s first hunt since...yeah. He should have checked in more, not thought so much about himself. They haven’t really talked about it, at least not since Cas got out of bed and decided if he was going to be human, he was going to do it well. 

Cas closes his eyes again. “I just mean...I assume this is what people mean when they talk about phantom pain, phantom limbs. I can still feel it.” His hand hovers above his breast bone. “But I reach for it and nothing. Obviously. When the ghost threw you, I went to heal you, and then I remembered. That’s all.”

“Hey,” Dean says. He reaches out, hesitantly, and puts one hand on Cas’s knee. Cas’s jeans are caked with graveyard mud. “I’m okay. I’m pretty used to getting banged up by ghosts.”

“Yeah,” Cas says, a little bitterly, looking down, to where their knees are still touching.

“Do you miss it?” Dean asks, and holds his breath. Maybe this is why they haven’t talked about it. He’s not sure he wants to know, but if Cas needs to talk, he’ll try.

“Yes and no. I don’t mind the general experience of humanity. I like being able to appreciate the full flavor profile of burgers.” Dean huffs a weak laugh and Cas continues. “You know if I’d been in Jack’s place, or Rowena’s, or Michael’s, I’d have given it up, there wouldn’t have even been a question. And it created a loophole in the Empty Deal, so I’m grateful for that, but the way it happened, ripped from me like that. It still feels like a wound.”

Dean flinches, and Cas eyes him cautiously. The Empty Deal is the other thing they don’t talk about. Cas knows he knows, but it’s never felt like a good time to really bring it up. It hadn’t ended up mattering in the end, so Dean hasn’t known quite how to explain the way it eats at him, the knowledge of the narrowly averted crisis festering under his skin. It makes him wonder what else he doesn’t know, and whether he’ll have any warning the next time the rug gets ripped out from under him.

He lets it pass this time too, because even here, in the intimate dark by the lamplight, he’s a coward.

“You didn’t choose it,” he says instead.

Cas shakes his head. “No. I didn’t. I would have, I think. But I didn’t.” Dean squeezes his knee, not sure how to respond. Team Free Will, right? They’re such a fucking mess.

Cas covers Dean’s hand with his own. “I’m okay, Dean. I’m just thinking.”

They sit there in silence for a moment before Dean moves to the other side of the table to finish his own food, and Cas heads for the shower to wash off the cemetery grime.

Dean lies awake that night listening to Cas’s breathing from the other bed, debating what’s better for him and for Cas. Do they go back? Selfishly, he wants to keep moving. The rock of a mattress notwithstanding, he’s slept better these last few nights than he has at the bunker lately, which is a little strange. He usually sleeps better at the bunker than anywhere. He’s gotten used to a routine and a familiar space, somewhere where he doesn’t have to sleep with a knife under the bed or the gun under the pillow, somewhere he can fall asleep without facing the door. 

But there’s also been something grounding about the hum of someone else's presence in the room and the physical exhaustion of actually spending his days _doing_ something; there’s something that will always be soothing about the pattern of life on the road.

There’s something nagging at him too, worry for Cas, and a weird layer of guilt over how much he doesn’t want to go back to the bunker and whatever it is Sam is building there that’s objectively pretty great but that Dean just can’t seem to fit himself into. He thinks about just staying gone, for a while, and that’s weird too. Dean’s never been the one who leaves.

He knows Sam and Eileen are worried. Jody and Donna are worried. Jack gives him a wide berth most of the time, even now, and Dean and Cas are caught in this tense holding pattern, like the pressure drop before the storm breaks. Dean feels like everyone’s waiting for him to snap or do _something_. He’s just not sure what it is he’s supposed to do.

\---

**_What happened was:_ **

He should have known better than to try to sleep the night before the big fight. It wasn’t his first last night on Earth, but he’d never really been able to relax on the cusp on something like that. There were too many what-ifs in his head - all the ways it could go wrong, and the uncertainty of what would happen if it actually went right.

They had two options - Billie’s way or Amara’s way, Death or the Darkness, mutually exclusive choices because if Amara’s way failed, there was no guarantee Jack would have enough juice left for Plan B. In the end it had been Jack’s call, and Dean had been guiltily relieved that for once it didn’t fall to him or Sam.

He found Cas in the library, as usual, pouring over the lore, as if there was even a possibility there was something they missed, as if there was a book left they hadn’t read cover to cover a dozen times. 

Cas looked up at him, a little bit of judgment in the set of his mouth. “You should be sleeping.”

“Can’t. Don’t know how anyone else _can_. You, me, Sam - we’re just spectators tomorrow, keep the attention off Jack, Rowena and Adam long enough for… I don’t know.”

“You think it’ll work?”

Dean sighs and drops down in the chair next to Cas, taking the last sip out of the whiskey glass sitting at Cas’s elbow before reaching for the decanter to refill it.

“No fucking clue. Billie didn’t seem to think so.”

(Billie had said, “it’s your funeral,” with a nonchalant shrug and disappeared with a crack to the air. Dean was pretty sure she didn’t used to have sound effects, but she’d gotten increasingly dramatic over the years.)

“Billie wants to reap God.”

“Yeah.”

Cas sighed. “For what it’s worth, I think Jack made the right choice, and I think you were right to let him. Killing Chuck...I was willing to try when it seemed like the only way, but this way at least we maintain balance. God and The Darkness together.”

“We’re asking a lot. Of Jack, and Rowena, and Michael.”

Cas looked at him out of the corner, of his eye, something unreadable on his face. “They all made a choice. Real choice, power freely given, without resentment or coercion, that’s the catch.” Then, more quietly, “We’ve all made sacrifices for the people we love, Dean.”

Dean was pretty sure that _do this or the world ends_ counts as coercion, but fine. “Yeah, why does it feel even harder when it’s someone else’s sacrifice?”

“Because it’s out of your control? Because you still don’t think you’re worth sacrificing for?”

Dean scoffed. “Wow, you’re not pulling your punches tonight, are you?”

“You’re not very good at sitting on the sidelines.”

They reached for the glass at the same time, fingers brushing against it. Cas moved to let go and push it toward Dean, but Dean kept a grip on his hand, tangling their fingers until Cas turned toward him, curious.

Dean took a deep breath. There were moments like this sometimes, the two of them alone in the dark, in the quiet of the bunker when time seemed to stretch and catch, tension between them drawn taut.

Well, there’s no time like the end of the world.

“Cas, listen,” he said. “If we don’t make it out of this,” he paused, trying to catch Cas’s eyes, but Cas was staring down at their joined hands, between them on the table. Dean swallowed hard. “I think we will; I have to, but if we don’t, you should know…”

“No.” Cas cut him off abruptly, looking up with something desperate in his eyes. “No,” he said again, more gently, squeezing Dean’s hand back when Dean made a move to pull away. “Whatever you’re going to say, tell me tomorrow.”

“Cas.”

“Dean. Tell me tomorrow. When this is over.”

Both let down and relieved, Dean just nodded and took the whiskey when Cas pushed the glass back toward him. 

**_What happened was:_ **

It was Jack who told Dean about the deal with the Empty, during the tenuous weeks the two of them spent at Cas’s bedside while he burned with fever and slipped in and out of consciousness and lucidity. Sam spent that time combing through the lore for answers while Rowena combed through the infirmary for anything that might help. 

Dean’s pretty sure it was supposed to be reassuring, in that straightforward way of Jack’s. With Heaven and Hell locked up, the Empty was asleep again, and with Cas human he was out of the Empty’s reach anyway. With the danger passed, no harm, no foul. Jack seemed to think that because it was _over_ it meant it didn’t need to be a secret, so he still had a few things to learn about life in the Winchester family.

Dean remembers his gut tightening, the flush of fear and relief and anger and stupid _hurt_ all hitting him at once, making him dizzy with the proximity of disaster. Again.

When Donatello called to ask what the fuck they’d done - why everything in his head and just gone _dark_ , like a switch flicking off, they explained the plan. He’d said Cas was lucky his power had been so low to begin with, and that an angel at full power could never have survived something like that. And Dean had spent another week sitting by Cas’s bed feeling sick until Cas finally blinked open his eyes and asked for Dean by name.

**_What happened was:_ **

Dean walked into the bathroom to find Cas wrapped in a towel, staring at his reflection in the mirror speculatively. 

“Hey bud, you missed a spot,” Dean said, reaching out hesitantly to brush at the smear of shaving cream on Cas’s jaw, then leaning in with a little more confidence when Cas didn’t pull away.

“I’d forgotten,” Cas said.

“About the shaving cream?”

Cas glared. “ _No_. About how distracting it is. I don’t know how humans do it. I’m hungry. I’m tired. _All the time_. Dean, personal hygiene is _constant_.”

Dean had to laugh at the despondent look on Cas’s face when he turned around.

“Well, you are in the gym a lot. That makes all of those things worse. You get used to it.”

“How do you know? You don’t know the difference. I don’t think I ever really got used to it the first time.” 

Dean knew Cas was just grumpy because he _wasn’t_ used to it. Needing to manage things like appropriate amounts of sleep and the effects of low blood sugar apparently did require a learning curve, but it set off a twinge of guilt all the same. He’d never really forgiven himself for the first time.

“Hey. The first time. After the fall. I don’t if I ever really said I was sorry. I didn’t want you to leave. I should have handled that differently.”

Cas narrowed his eyes, confused. “You’ve explained what happened with Sam. I know you had to make a choice. I wouldn’t have been much help to you as a human at that point anyway.”

Dean said, “Cas, no. That wasn’t…” 

Cas held up a hand. “That was years ago, Dean. We’ve changed. I just have to figure out how to do it now.”

Dean closed his eyes against the guilt, like a raised scar he could run his fingers across, and wished that wasn’t Cas’s takeaway.

**_What happened was:_ **

They never did finish what they started in the library, and Dean hates himself a little for how much easier that conversation seemed when they were staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.

\---

So it’s like this: He loves Cas completely, but also enough to let Cas make his own decisions.  
Cas deserves that, if nothing else. After everything, he deserves that much.

And it’s not that Dean doesn’t know Cas loves him. He has been paying attention for the last decade and change. But Cas is also impulsive and opaque. He has his own agenda and obligations, and even when Dean _is_ that obligation - something he never wanted to be to begin with - they’ve generally had some pretty radical differences of opinion on how that should be handled. Cas loves him and sacrifices for him, and for Sam and Jack and the world, but he doesn’t stay. It’s always something, and Dean’s always turning around and getting blindsided by Cas’s best intentions. (Case in point: the narrowly dodged bullet of the deal with The Empty, what the actual fuck.)

Cas is human now, with the freedom of a human life spread out before him. He loves Dean; he loves Jack; he loves them all, and he’ll stay until he finds a purpose that takes him away, or until he decides unilaterally that it’s somehow in Dean’s or Jack's or the world’s best interest for him to go, and when that happens Dean won’t get a say because he never does.

\---

When Dean asks for another case, Sam sighs and sends them to Wisconsin on a wild hodag chase. When Dean points out that _hodags aren’t real_ , Sam says _something_ is attacking tourists outside of Rhinelander and it’s “worth checking out.”

Well, jokes on all of them, because hodags are real, it turns out. Who knew? 

They spend a few unpleasant nights running around the woods in the dark before they find it, if by “find it” you mean, “get attacked out of nowhere.”

Dean barely has time to react to Cas calling his name, before the creature is on him, all horns and fucking teeth. At least they’re apparently smaller than urban legend would have it. He’s on the ground, trying to wrestle out from underneath it when Cas gets a hit in with the knife and draws its attention, giving Dean a chance to fumble for his gun. 

It takes a full clip to take it down, and by then it’s got its teeth sunk deep into the meat of Cas’s shoulder. Dean pulls off his flannel for a makeshift tourniquet to stop the bleeding, but it soaks through quickly.

They stumble back through the woods to the car, Cas leaning on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean muttering under his breath about _fucking urban legend, hodags what the fuck, what’s next? Fucking Mothman?_

“Dean,” Cas says through clenched teeth, “please shut up.”

Dean does, depositing Cas in the back seat and breaking a bunch of traffic laws to get back to the motel. He’s tempted to go to the hospital then, but his hunter instincts override the frantic impulse. They look a mess, and hospitals are too many questions, even if this is Cas’s first major human injury, and he’s looking woozy in the streetlights, getting blood all over the back seat of the Impala.

When Dean gets them back to the motel and gets Cas’s shirt off in the light, it’s not as bad as he thought. He’s patched up worse, on Sam and his dad and Bobby. Even on himself in a pinch.

“I’m fine, Dean,” Cas says, swigging the whiskey Dean sets next to him on the counter. They have real antiseptic now, of course, but you can’t drink the antiseptic, so whiskey is still a key part of the process.

Fine is not really the word Dean would use, but Cas is definitely more with it after Dean gets him patched up and to bed. He drops off quickly. Once Dean is sure Cas is asleep and breathing easy, he goes out to scrub out the car, working in the light of the dashboard and the guttering street lamp as he wipes Cass’ blood off the upholstery, thinking _what are we doing here._

In the morning, “fine” is definitely not the word Dean would use. He finds Cas in the bathroom, poking at his shoulder, where it’s starting to swell, red and angry. 

Dean meets Cas’s eyes in the mirror and says, “I think we should get that looked at.” He waits for a protest, for the accusation of being overprotective. If it was him, he wouldn’t bother. If it was Sam, he still might not bother, and Cas no doubt knows that. They have access to antibiotics in the bunker that would probably take care of any infection, but he doesn’t like the heat coming off of Cas’s skin or the sweat starting to bead at his hairline.

But Cas just looks back at him and shrugs, wincing when the movement pulls at the makeshift stitches.

“No offense to your surgical skills, but I think that’s probably a good idea.”

\---

Dean drinks about three cups of hospital vending machine coffee in the waiting room. It’s been awhile since they’ve had to do this - the benefits of both the bunker and having an angel on-call. He’s rusty at both managing his hospital-related anxiety and the blustering charm it takes to sell their weak-ass lies about what actually happened. 

They went with a dog bite, in the woods, and the hack job stitches were because it was late and they got lost hiking. It’s a stupid story, but Dean’s pretty sure they can effectively convey being the kind of stupid people that would do something like that.

Cas is back in the exam room for about 45 minutes, before a nurse comes out and makes a beeline for Dean.

“Can you come with me, please?”

“What?”

The nurse shrugs. He looks as bewildered as Dean feels. “The doctor asked for you.”

“Okay, Alan.” Dean says, taking at the guy’s name tag. “For me? Why?”

Alan shrugs again, giving nothing away. “She wants to talk to you and your partner.” Dean follows him back with some trepidation.

When they get to the room, Cas is standing next to the exam table in just a t-shirt, and Dean can see he’s bandaged from shoulder to elbow. The doctor is standing against the sink, making notes in a folder.

“Thanks, Alan,” she says without looking up when Dean enters. Alan backs out of the room. 

Dean makes eye contact with Cas, who just shrugs, also looking bewildered.

“All good?” Dean tries.

The doctor glances up, pushing dark hair behind her ear and looking him up and down, and then blinks at him with wide, disarming brown eyes. It’s a little terrifying.

“Oh, yes,” she says. “Rebecca Fischer.” She holds her hand out and Dean shakes it warily.

“Dean,” he says.

“Just Dean?” She rolls her eyes when he nods. “Ok. I shot your friend up with some industrial strength antibiotics.” She looks at Cas. “Like I told you, you’re going to have to come back tomorrow for another one and then we’ll assess if you need more. And fill this.” She hands him a slip of paper from the folder she was writing on and Cas takes it hesitantly.

She leans against the sink with folded arms, eyes darting back and forth between Dean and Cas. It doesn’t strike Dean as a very doctorly pose. Then she sighs.

“You know hodag bites pretty much always get infected like that.”

Dean gapes. Cas starts, “What’s…” She holds up one hand cutting him off.

“Usually when I see that kind of thing it’s tourists out where they shouldn’t be, or those silly urban legend hunters. Or Youtubers.” She says the last with some disdain. “They tend to be pretty vague about what happened - it was dark, it was a wild animal, they didn’t really see anything. Etc. You guys came in with a pretty clear story. It’s a dead giveaway. That and the practiced, yet still kind of iffy, stitches. And all the flannel.”

“You’ve seen a hodag?” Dean asks, trying to catch up.

“Me? No. Just the aftermath. I’ve seen a hunter, though. You’re not the first through here. For awhile my sister dated…” she cuts herself off, “You know what, it doesn’t matter. Not my first hunters, not my first hodag bite, not my first rodeo. Did you at least kill it?” 

Cas nods and Dr. Fischer’s face shutters a little. “Good,” she says, then shakes it off, back to business. 

There’s a story there, but Dean’s not sure he should ask. 

She continues, “Mostly, I just called you back to really emphasize to both of you the importance of serious antibiotics if you’re going to be running around out in the woods. Hodags aren’t venomous, but their saliva’s chock full of some fun bacteria. Your friend’s lucky. You get a bite right on a joint - I’ve seen people lose mobility. I’ve seen people lose _limbs_. The thrill seekers I can forgive for some stupidity, but how did you guys not know that?” She’s just looking at them, a little lost, and great, now everyone is bewildered.

“We’ll remember that,” Dean says, weakly.

“Great,” she says, nodding decisively. “Here’s my card.” She points at Cas. “You come back tomorrow. And call me if the infection spreads.”

\---

They spend the next week in Rhinelander, resting and pumping Cas full of antibiotics. They move to a different motel with a kitchenette so they can eat something other than diner burgers and Dean can make sure Cas stays hydrated.

He’s hovering. He knows it. He knows Cas is annoyed, mostly because Cas makes no secret of it, waving him off with an “I’m _fine_ , Dean” every time Dean asks how he’s feeling. 

And Cas _is_ fine. Dean knows that too. This kind of thing is just part of the hunter life. Cas’s humanity may throw a new wrinkle in the mix, but they’ll both get used to that too. Even Rebecca (who has deigned to let them call her Rebecca) says everything is fine; there’s no damage to the joint, and Cas can go back to “whatever stupidity you all get up to” as soon as the antibiotics run their course. 

She makes no secret that she thinks they’re a couple of dumbasses, and she wasn’t even swayed by the Winchester name since she’s not really that plugged into, or impressed by, the hunter community. She knows her hodags, though, and she’s been a wealth of information that Dean passed on to Sam. 

Sam was actually pretty put out by the fact that hodags are apparently hunter common knowledge and something else they missed by not having regular access to the wider hunter community, despite Men of Letters lore and John’s meticulous records. It was kind of funny. When Dean suggested sending someone to investigate Mothman, Sam huffed _it’s a fucking owl, Dean_ and hung up on him.

\---

They don’t really talk about what’s next until Cas forces the issue.

“I feel fine,” he says over dinner one night, rolling his shoulder as if to demonstrate the full range of movement. “We can move on.”

“Do you want to go back to the bunker?”

Cas’s head shoots up at that, eyes narrow. “No.”

“I just mean…”

“I know what you meant. I’m not _fragile_. I can hold my own as well as you can.” He shakes his head, looking to the side and not quite meeting Dean’s eyes. “I made sure of that,” he says, more quietly. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

That’s...a statement they should probably unpack at some point. “I always worry, Cas, but it’s not a reflection on your ability to hold your own.” 

Cas just looks at him. “Do _you_ want to go back to the bunker. If we go back, will you stay there?” Dean hesitates and Cas takes his hesitation for what it is.

“Okay, then. Tell Sam to find us another case,” Cas says, and turns back to his lasagna. 

\---

So they don’t go back to the bunker. Sam is Displeased about this decision, but he sends them another file, and another after that, mostly keeping them to hauntings that are simple and straightforward, one of which ends up being a hoax. Sam swears he didn’t know and that it was worth checking out. Dean magnanimously doesn’t point out that that’s also what Sam said about hodags. 

He doesn’t mind the easy hunts, really. They wrap up quickly, people are grateful, and he doesn’t have to think too hard about anything other than the investigation. Sam can pretend he’s sending them on cakewalks for Cas’s sake, while he gets his sealegs, and Dean can pretend Cas doesn’t call Sam to debrief on Dean’s mental state when he thinks Dean isn’t paying attention. Everything is fine.

\---

Dean’s grown used to hunting with Cas over the years, to the point where they have their own shorthand, and it’s almost as seamless and instinctive as hunting with Sam. He didn’t quite account for how Cas’s new humanity would change their approach, though. Dean chalks some of it up to being a little gun shy after the hodag incident, but it becomes apparent that Cas is cautious in a way he never was before. He’s not hesitant, never seems afraid, but he’s thorough and precise in his planning, quick to pull Dean back if he feels like they don’t have enough information, more inclined to call for backup when things get weird, even if Dean’s confident they can handle it.

That’s how they end up working a case with Stevie in Savannah. Admittedly, the case is a weird one. 

In general, Dean tries to stay away from Savannah. It’s like hunting in New Orleans or around Civil War battlefields. The whole place is lousy with ghosts, most of them relatively harmless echoes, and EVP is off the charts wherever you go. It’s easy to get disoriented and hard to narrow things down, so if there’s not really a problem it’s better to just let it be.

But this time there’s a problem, and it’s probably not ghosts.

“Yeah, if I didn’t know better, I’d say possession,” Stevie says, closing Cas’s folder, and sitting back in the booth to cross her arms over her chest. 

Dean makes a _see_ gesture toward Cas over his coffee and Cas rolls his eyes.

“It’s not demons,” he says. “There are no demons.”

And no, it can’t be, but the reports of black eyes, people bleeding from their eyes and turning on their friends, the gruesomeness of the murders, the _superhuman strength_. It _sounds_ like some demon bullshit, for sure. There have been five murders already, like a chain reaction, something jumping from person to person - one perpetrator is the next victim, the next perpetrator is always someone who was at or near the scene. The current guy’s in custody, but so was the last one, so Dean wouldn’t put money on that doing any good. 

They’re all men, all the type of guys with a reputation for being able to take care of themselves. None what Dean would call good people, based on the data in front of them.

“Some kind of contagion?” Stevie asks. 

Dean shrugs. “Sure, maybe; there’s a direct link between the victims, and in some cases the only link is physical proximity. But then why does it only jump to one person at a time? You’d think with a contagion we’d have an outbreak.”

Stevie sighs. “What does Hunter HQ say?”

“Sam says it’s definitely not demons,” Cas supplies, helpfully, and it’s Dean’s turn to roll his eyes. 

As an angel, Cas could be passive-aggressive, petty, and sarcastic. As a human, he has lost any angelic restraint he once had. 

They had a run-in with a ghoul outside Atlanta a week ago; they’d split up to do recon and when Dean had a break in the case he went out to the cemetery alone when Cas didn’t answer his phone fast enough, leaving Cas a voicemail about where to find him. Everything worked out fine, minus a few more mild bumps and bruises, but Cas has been snippy with Dean ever since.

Dean knows Cas is annoyed he didn’t wait for backup, but he also figures partly the problem is just that they’re constantly tripping over each other. They’ve never really spent so much extended, unbroken time together. Dean’s never actually spent so much extended, unbroken time with _anyone_ except his dad and Sam, and if he thought no one could annoy him as much as Sam can, he underestimated Castiel, former angel of the Lord.

“I didn’t say it was demons, I said it _looks_ like possession, and Stevie backed me up. Right, Stevie?” He looks up at her expectantly, and she’s just looking back and forth between them.

She finally says, “I don’t...think I want to get involved.”

“Well, it’s not possession,” Cas says, and turns to get the server's attention for more coffee.

 _It’s not possession_ , Dean mouths at the back of Cas’s head while his back is turned. 

Stevie is suddenly very interested in whatever is on her phone.

\---

George Anderson dies in police custody that night. They have the station staked out, but he’s attacked by a police officer, so solitary confinement and the cameras didn’t help. They’d gone in as FBI, so they’re on the scene within minutes and it's the first time they’ve seen the immediate aftermath. 

It looks pretty much as described - a victim that looks like he had his eyes burned (fine, no demons, but goddamn), a perpetrator huddling in the corner and shaking, lashing out at anyone who comes near, looking pale and drawn, and bleeding from the eyes. 

There’s something familiar about it up close, though. Dean’s easing over toward the latest perpetrator/next victim, when Cas grabs his arm and yanks him back, hissing in his ear, “Don’t touch him.” Cas turns and says to the room at large, “Nobody touch him.”

Dean pulls Cas over to where Stevie is still watching from the hallway. “What’ve you got, Cas?”

Cas’s eyes dart back into the room, and the officers who are still hanging back, inclined to listen to the FBI agent. He sighs. “I think we should look for a hex bag.”

Dean turns to survey the scene again and gets it suddenly. He thinks of Cas, shaking and wan, eyes bleeding after Rowena’s attack dog spell, and says, “Fuck. We should look for a hex bag.”

“You do that. I’ll call Rowena. _Make sure you don’t touch him_.” Cas stalks off down the hall, and Stevie and Dean duck back into the room to look for a hex bag.

A witch doesn’t seem a ton more likely than demons, really. Their numbers are so diminished, with any demon deals essentially being voided when Hell went on lock down. But if this is not the kind of weird shit that comes from demons, then it’s definitely the kind of weird shit that comes from witches.

There’s no hex bag. They go back through everything from the previous scenes, and there’s nothing there either. There’s nothing tangible, really, to indicate witchcraft - no spell remnants at the scenes, no sigils - and when they get Rowena on the phone again in the morning, she’s less convinced than Cas is.

“I don’t know, boys,” she says, tinny through the cell phone speaker. “No hex bags; no other signs of ritual. It sounds like it shares a lot of the symptoms of the attack dog spell, but for someone to do a spell of that magnitude over distance with nothing to ground it and make it contagious? That would take a lot of raw power, and we’re talking naturally occurring raw power. I don’t see how anyone operating on borrowed power or a deal could have that kind of strength left. Do you know how it spreads?”

Dean looks over at Cas, pouring through his notes on the laptop. “Cas thinks touch, and he’s probably right, but it always only affects one person at a time, and it’s not the first person who touches them after, and there’s not necessarily a connection other than proximity.”

“Yes, there is,” Cas says, pushing the laptop over to Stevie.

“And?” Dean says.

“Everybody but the first victim,” Stevie says slowly, “...they’d all killed someone prior to this, or been suspected of it.”

Their patient zero, Eric Bond, had always been the outlier of the victims. Definitely a dick, but the kind of dick who was a lawyer for criminals rather than outright being one himself.

“That we know of,” Dean says.

“That we know of,” Stevie agrees.

“So the first person to touch the victim who has taken a human life is next in line,” Rowena summarizes. There’s a lengthy pause, and then she sighs. “ _That_ sounds like witchcraft, boys. You all didn’t touch anyone, did you?”

“No,” Cas says, quietly, glancing at Dean out of the corner of his eye, and then looking down. 

Dean opens his mouth to say...something, some kind of objection, but then closes it with a snap. She’s right; if this is a witch and that’s the connection, they’d have been great cannon fodder for whatever spell this is.

From there it’s quick, once the dots are connected, a straight line from Eric’s first wife’s “suicide” to his estranged stepson currently living with his aunt and uncle out in Rincon. When they track the stepson down, they find a wiry, nerdy, nineteen year-old kid with his mom’s old spellbook, a deep hatred of his stepfather, and absolutely no fucking clue about the extent of his power. He hadn’t even known the spell had worked for sure, much less the ricochet effect it had. 

They make sure no one with blood on their hands touches George Anderson’s body before it’s cremated, and they send the kid with Stevie back to the bunker and Rowena, when he seems willing to go.

Over beers that night, Dean holds his out in a toast. “Good catch.”

Cas clinks his glass, and gives Dean a snarky half-smile. “I told you it wasn’t possession”

\---

They take down a Rugaru outside Shreveport and walk away without as much as a scratch. Dean feels triumphant, and hyper aware he shouldn’t be so grateful to finish a hunt unscathed.

\---

Sam doesn’t have a case for them, so Dean heads for the coast. They cross the bridge into Galveston Island just before sunrise. Dean buys them both cheap gas station coffee and drives to the water and they sit on the hood of the Impala as the sky starts to glow orange above them.

When Dean used to talk about taking them all to the beach and a real vacation, he had California in mind. Maybe that was because of Sam, and the life he’d had to abandon. Maybe they’ll do that someday. But this works too, the quiet in the midst of the chaos, the sun coming up over the sea wall and the Gulf.

For all the bouncing around the country he’d done as a kid, Dean was fifteen the first time he’d seen the ocean, and there was always something frightening and enthralling about the expanse of it, the limitless horizon.

Cas takes a sip of his coffee and gazes out at the water. “I’ve seen the ocean in a million forms,” he says, quietly. “I remember when there was one continent and the water just spread out forever.”

It’s humbling when Cas talks like that, the reminder that his crabby friend who can’t function in the morning before coffee remembers 300 million years ago and is somehow here with him, in the day-to-day mundanities of this life. But there’s something enthralling about that too, Cas and the limitless horizon.

“Yeah?” Dean says, just as softly, not to break the spell.

“I’ve never seen it like this.” Cas hesitates. “Is it strange that everything feels more sacred now? I feel time passing like I never did before. There’s an urgency to it. And something precious in the transience. The ocean looks the same, but it feels bigger than me now, timeless when I’m not. Do all humans feel like this?”

“I don’t know,” Dean says. “Maybe. Sometimes. If they’re paying attention.”

Cas smiles a little sadly and casts his eyes down at the sand. “It’s fading, you know.”

“What?”

“Everything. I once spoke every language. I remembered...everything. Or thought I did. They reprogrammed me in Heaven so many times, more than I knew. I’m not sure I knew what was real.” And wow, does Dean know that feeling. He’s still not sure, even now, how much of the path of his life was Chuck, or how much of what and who he is is the weapon John Winchester fashioned in the quest for revenge, or even how different those things are, in the end, cause and effect spilling out through the years. Has he ever made his own choices? He hopes so.

“But I remembered a lot.” Cas glances up at Dean. “Too much for a human mind to hold, it seems. It’s strange what’s right on the edges.” He reaches one hand to rub at his temple and then drops it next to him on the car near where Dean’s hand is resting. Their fingers brush lightly.

“Are you…” Dean starts and trails off, not sure how to finish.

“It’s okay, Dean,” Cas says. He shifts so that their fingers catch and he can curl his hand over Dean’s and squeeze. “I tried, in the beginning. To retain what I could. But I can’t, and that’s okay.”

“Do you regret it?” Dean asks, quietly. He probably shouldn’t ask again - they’ve had some version of this conversation several times, the question asked and answered. But Dean keeps worrying at it, like picking at a scab. There’s no mission now, no real goal. Cas has seemed relatively content these last few months to hang out in the bunker and follow Dean from shitty motel to shitty motel across the country, but it seems like a lot to ask for that to last when there’s no epic cause anymore, nothing angel-worthy left.

“No,” Cas says, smiling softly, seemingly oblivious to Dean’s internal turmoil, though there’s something concerned in his eyes, when he turns to look at Dean before gazing back out over the water. “I feel so much more now, more deeply and more immediately, and maybe that’s the trade. I regret how it happened, but I’m at peace with the outcome.”

Dean takes a deep breath and doesn’t move his hand. They stay that way, drinking coffee and staring at the limitless horizon as the sky lightens.

\---

There are rumors of chupacabras wreaking havoc in southern New Mexico, so they head that way. It’s another “gimme” from Sam; chupacabras are pretty straightforward - fast, but not too big or bright, easy to find if you know what you’re looking for, and relatively easy to put down.

They’re on the outskirts of Las Cruces, so it’s not the prettiest part of the state, flat and still hot, in the dying edges of summer, but at least it’s chile season and the food is good.

They go in as Fish and Wildlife Services since, thankfully, there haven’t been any human attacks - just goats, and cows, and the occasional horse. At first it seems like nobody’s really seen anything, and the locals are assuming these are wolf kills. It’s one of those times when Dean figures they’ll have to be careful not to run into the actual Fish and Wildlife Service officers.

The consensus is that if anybody DID see anything, it was these two guys who live on a horse ranch outside of Mesilla. They’re quiet, keep to themselves, but they seem to be who you call when you have questions about livestock deaths, either from sickness or animal attacks.

\---

When they find the place, it’s a sprawling adobe ranch house with a porch swing swaying on the front porch, overlooking the pasture land. A little black cat uncurls itself from a bed next to the door and wanders over to twine itself around Cas’s legs; he bends down to scratch behind its ears.

Dean knocks on the door and there’s a clattering from inside the house. He has his badge up, ready to go, but his normal spiel dies on his lips when he comes face-to-face with Jesse Cuevas.

Jesse squints at him for a moment, and then a broad smile takes over his face as he leans in the door frame and crosses his arms over his chest. “Dean Winchester? Well, I’ll be damned. If you came out here for that chupacabra, I’m afraid you wasted a trip. We took care of that a few days ago. But why don’t you come on in?”

Inside, the house is light and airy, intentionally rustic, with wide exposed wooden beams in the high ceiling and brightly colored rugs covering the sandstone tile floor. They enter into a wide living room with a hallway running off to one side. The far wall is entirely windows, with a view of the pasture where it curves around back.

Cas is looking at him questioningly. The little cat has followed him into the house, crying shrilly at his heels for more pets. Jesse smiles at her indulgently. “I see you’ve met Llorona. We named her that because she makes that noise.” Llorona shrieks in response. “Cesar!” Jesse calls, “come look what the cat dragged in.”

Cesar appears from what must be the door to the kitchen on the other side of the room, drying his hands on a dish towel. “Hey!” He says, surprise lighting his face. He crosses the room to pull Dean into a backslapping hug. “What brings you to our neck of the woods? I hope not that chupacabra because…”

“You took care of it, Jesse said,” Dean says with a grin, still taking in the house. He intentionally hadn’t gotten contact information from them the last time, not wanting to drag them into the mess with Amara, and he’d kind of figured he’d never see them again. There’s something soothing about seeing even just the edges of the life they’d built for themselves. “I thought you all were retired.”

Jesse shrugs. “Mostly. But that’s easier said than done it turns out, and you can’t just ignore a chup in your backyard. Where’s your brother?”

“Sam’s back home. He’s a little more on the administrative side now. He got married.”

“Good for him,” Cesar says and Dean laughs.

“Yeah, to another hunter. Easier said than done might be right, but she’s the best. This is our friend Cas.”

Jesse and Cesar share a quick look when Cas steps forward to shake their hands. Dean says, “Cas, this is Jesse and Cesar. We met them on a hunt, what was it, almost five years ago now?”

“Something like that. It’s crazy to think.” Cesar eyes Cas speculatively. “So, you’re the angel, right? We never knew if we should believe that part of the story.” 

Cas ducks his head. “Formerly, but yes. It’s nice to meet you.” 

“How did you…” Dean starts, but Cesar waves him off. 

“Retired doesn’t mean out of the loop. We’re still mostly in touch with the Mexico hunter community, but New Mexico has some weird shit and people pass through. There have been quite the rumors about the Winchesters over the last few years. Is all that true?”

Dean shrugs. If the rumors are weirder than the truth then he doesn’t really want to know what people are saying. “Honestly, probably. It’s been a weird decade, man, I don’t know what to tell you.”

Jesse gestures to the overstuffed leather couches taking up most of the living room. “Come have a beer and tell us about it.”

\---

They have quite a few beers, and several helpings of Cesar’s enchiladas as the sun starts to sink over the horizon, stripping the sky in gold and orange. Turns out Jesse and Cesar have been running something of a hunter roadside hostel - not hunting themselves, but gathering and passing on information, leaving the lights on for anyone passing through. Apparently they met Bobby briefly a few years ago.

Dean laughs a little at that realization and takes another swig of his beer. “Well, anything he told you is almost definitely true.”

It’s just after 10 when Jesse says, “If I know how hunters operate, then what we’ve got here is more comfortable than whatever roach motel you’re holed up in. You guys are welcome to stay the night. We’ve got the room. I think only one guest bed is made up right now, but we can make up another, or…” he looks back and forth between them, questioning, and Dean guesses there’s one more part of the rumors they’re not sure of the truth of.

Hunters are a gossipy lot. He knows the broad strokes of what everyone says about him and Cas. He’s known for years. People have said enough of it to his face. But he wonders, not for the first time, exactly how that plays out in the wider Winchester mythology. What do they say about him, in between talking about God and Lucifer and walking through worlds?

“I don’t…” he starts, at the same time as Cas says - 

“No, that’s fine; we don’t need to put you out.” He makes quick eye contact with Dean and then looks away.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Dean echoes, and pops open another beer.

Cesar and Cas both head to bed around midnight, and Dean stays up with Jesse for just one more. It’s partly because he’s enjoying the night and the quiet camaraderie, but also partly because going to bed with Cas, at the same time, in the same bed, after a warm night with friends takes on a different kind of scary intimacy than exhausted nights in motels after the hunt. 

If he had it once, he’d want it always.

They’re sitting on the porch, staring out at the desert, the sky lit brightly with stars, clear and endless, in that way it only is this far out west and away from the cities. It reminds him of the ocean, a little, in the way it feels like you can see forever.

“I like him, your guy,” Jesse says, glancing at Dean out of the corner of his eye, still something a little questioning in his tone. Not prying, just curious. 

Dean just shrugs because, sure. It’s not exactly true, but it’s not _not_ true, either. Dean kind of figures that if Cesar and Jesse didn’t clock him the day they met, all those years ago, it’s only because Cas wasn’t there to make everything blindingly obvious.

And he kind of thinks they had his number, even then.

“Yeah, I’m not sure what we would have done with him, honestly.”

“Fallen angel, huh? That always seemed like the most far fetched part of the story. I thought my life was weird.”

Dean huffs a laugh and takes a sip of his beer. “Believe me. It is far from the weirdest part of the story.”

“Yeah, sounds like. But you all are good now? Crisis is past?”

“Yeah, seems to be. We’re okay at the moment.”

Dean’s not sure he’s good now, but collectively the people he loves are, which was really all that ever mattered. All night he’s been trying to avoid saying how weird it is now that the story’s over and they’re living in the epilogue, which Dean wasn’t supposed to be here for and seems to suck at. The crisis is past, which he’s grateful for, but he’s also great in a crisis. He’s apparently not as solid in the aftermath. Which is a thing that he’s learning now because this is the first time he can remember when there hasn’t been a crisis. If your whole life is a crisis, does that still constitute a crisis? Self-discovery is great. 

He’s impressed by this, though, the way Cesar and Jesse have built a new life from the raw materials of their old one. He wants to ask if they ever felt this unmoored and isn’t sure how.

“I like what you’ve done here. This is...I see why this is what you all wanted.”

Jesse smiles softly and intimately, looking down. “It’s what Cesar wanted. For so long I didn’t know how to want anything except revenge. He could see a way out when I couldn’t, you know? But I promised him this, and he was right to push for it; it’s amazing.” 

Dean just nods and looks down at his beer.

Cas is asleep when Dean comes to bed, the light from the moon falling across the curve of his shoulder where he’s turned away from the window. It’s a king bed - plenty of space for even two grown men to stretch out, not touching. Still, when Dean slides into bed, he can feel the heat of Cas’s body across the mattress, the rise and fall of his breath more intimate and infinitely closer than it is across the gap between beds in their endless hotel rooms.

He wakes first in the morning to Cas’s fingers curled over his hip, and he lies there for a moment, just breathing, before the smell of coffee calls him to the kitchen and he leaves Cas asleep.

\---

They pass on Cesar and Jesse’s contact info to Sam and Eileen and head for Denver, another haunting. Cas is quiet and contemplative on the drive. 

Sam sighs before he grudgingly sends them the info. “Dean, come back for a while. Or just take a break. You guys need it.”

Dean says, “We’ll be back soon, Sammy,” and maybe means it.

\---

It turns out he doesn’t have a chance to decide.

The Accident, as Dean comes to think of it later, the same way he thinks about The Fire or The Deal or The Mark or The Fall, like a formal, dividing line between before and after, happens in Ogden, UT. It doesn’t really warrant that kind of gravitas; it’s hardly on par with an apocalypse, but it’s a pivot all the same, a kind of slamming, sudden stop.

And it’s so stupid. After everything, it is so, so stupid.

The house is like a haunted mansion out of a horror movie - dark and foreboding; old and in disrepair. The poltergeist comes at him where he’s standing at the edge of the stairwell and flashes out just before he swings the steel bar, and then in again with enough force to shove. The banister gives, and he has enough time to register Cas shouting his name before he hits the ground three stories below and everything goes black.

\---

He wakes up in a hospital bed, blinking against the brightness of the light until Sam comes waveringly into focus.

“Dean. Dean, can you hear me?” Sam is saying. Dean registers Sam’s death grip on his right hand and the IV in his left arm, and then, as the fog clears a little more, his left leg, elevated in a sling.

“Hey, Sammy,” he manages to croak out trying to push himself into sitting position, and then slumping back on the pillows when he’s hit with a wave of dizziness.

Sam smiles tightly, and squeezes his hand even tighter. “Maybe don’t try to move.”

Dean closes his eyes. God, he hates hospitals. He can remember the house, the poltergeist, then nothing. He’s trying to do the math on the drive from Lebanon to Ogden, but his head is spinning and foggy and his thoughts can’t quite catch.

“How long have you been here?” He asks.

Sam laughs a little wetly. Dean can see him better now, and he looks wan and tired, bags under his eyes.

“You’ve been out for a few days.” When Dean shifts again, Sam says, “Seriously, _try_ not to move too much. You’ll pull your stitches or the IV.” That’s when Dean takes in the chest to waist bandages around his middle.

“What happened? Where’s Cas?”

Sam rubs a hand over his face. “Cas is fine. Physically. He hasn’t slept in days; I sent him to the hotel to rest. You need to rest too. Don’t get agitated.”

“What’s the damage?” Dean asks; he’s sure he’s not going to like the answer. He can’t feel much of anything except vaguely floaty, which probably means hard core painkillers masking whatever he’s gonna get hit with when they start to wear off.

Sam sighs, and drops his head, probably so Dean won’t see him blinking away the wetness in his eyes, though it’s definitely there.

“You’ll live,” Sam says. “Though they weren’t totally sure until the swelling in your brain went down. You scared me, Dean. And you _scared_ Cas. He’s a wreck. I don’t know why you insist…” he trails off, and then says, fiercely, “No, you know what, I’m so fucking glad you’re awake, and I’m not starting anything with you right now, but we are going to talk when you get out of here.” He slumps forward, seemingly in relief, and doesn’t let go of Dean’s hand.

When Dean wakes up the next time he’s not sure how much time has passed, but it’s dark outside the window and now he can feel the ache in his side and leg. Sam is gone, but Cas is there, clutching a cardboard coffee cup and staring out the window. He turns with a start when Dean lets out a low groan.

“Dean,” he says, low and soft, and moves over to the bedside, hesitantly laying one hand on Dean’s forearm. When Dean can see him better, in the lamp light, he looks even worse than Sam did, pale and washed out.

“Hey,” Dean says.

“Hey. I’m glad you’re awake.”

Dean tries to smile, but he’s a little afraid it comes out as more of a grimace. “Me too. Did you at least get the poltergeist?” He means it as a joke, something to lighten up the intense way Cas is just staring at him, but Cas stiffens beside him instead.

“No, actually,” he says, tone clipped, and eyes not really meeting Dean’s. “I was too busy calling 911 and figuring out what I was going to tell the paramedics when they got there. Don’t worry, Sam sent in a cleanup crew after.”

“I bet that was fun to explain.”

“It really wasn’t,” Cas bites out.

Dean gets that none of his jokes are going to land. “Hey,” Dean says again, turning his wrist a little, so Cas’s hand will slide down his arm and their fingers brush. “Thank you. You probably saved my life, for about the millionth time.”

Cas drops his head and lets out a scoffing laugh that sounds closer to a sob. “Never do that again,” he says, and Dean is reminded of standing over a human Cas, slumped in that desk chair, all those years ago. He’s reminded of sitting with Jack in the dark of the bunker a few months ago, waiting to see if Cas would wake up.

“I’ll try not to.” And he means it - they could both stand to be more careful. He didn't survive literal hell multiple times, God, Lucifer, demonic possession, and all the rest of that shit to get ended by a teenage poltergeist in Utah. That's just embarrassing. 

And he knows the fear Sam and Cas are feeling, of course he does. He’s been on the other side of this hospital bed.

“I don’t know if I believe you,” Cas says, quietly. Dean squeezes his hand because it’s all he can do, and he knows that feeling too. Cas sits with him until he drifts off again.

Apparently, what Cas told the paramedics was as close to the truth as he could get. He and his husband are ghost hunters, they snuck into an abandoned building, Dean lost his balance and fell. He was a little defensive about the “my husband” lie, eyes flashing like he was daring Dean to question it, quick to specify that claiming to be immediate family was the only way they’d let him stay.

Like Dean would question it. Close e-fucking-nough. The closest Dean’s ever gonna get. Even if what they are now is all they ever are, he’s on this ride until Cas gets off.

And he’s pathetically grateful for it in the week that follows, since it means either Sam or Cas is with him most of the time. He feels guilty for the amount of time they’re spending perched at his hospital bed, but he selfishly doesn’t want them to go. 

Turns out, when you fall three stories, knock your head on a marble buffet table, impale yourself on a rotting piece of broken wood, and shatter your knee cap, recovery is slated to take awhile. Dean’s not sure if he’s unlucky that he managed to somehow hit that fun combo or extremely lucky that he’s not in a coma, the rotting wood missed any vital organs, and the doctors say there’s a good chance he’ll recover most movement.

When he says that, kind of flippantly, trying not to think about the pending surgery on his knee, the ache in his head that won’t quit, and the magic Sam is probably having to work to fake the insurance coverage, Sam just glares and Cas gets up and walks out of the room.

\---

They discharge him after surgery to remove most of his broken knee cap, with crutches, a knee brace, a referral to a doctor in Kansas, a physical therapy protocol, and several types of medication for the headaches. 

However, the wound in his side is infection free and healing cleanly. Getting impaled by a rotting piece of wood was, quite literally, the least of his problems, so he’s got that going for him. No one appreciates that observation either.

Having your knee cap removed sucks. Post-concussion syndrome sucks more. The rest of the occupants of the bunker looking at him like he’s going to snap if they breathe on him wrong sucks the most. 

Jack keeps asking him if he needs anything anytime they’re in the room together, which isn’t often. Rowena keeps bringing him tea that smells like ass and tastes worse, but does help the pain. Eileen keeps sneaking him comfort food. Sam keeps taking _away_ the comfort food, and the beer, and the television, and the computer, and then making him eat vegetables. Sam gets mad, and then sad, when Dean’s too resistant; he says, “Jesus, will you just let me take care of you for once?” and Dean doesn’t have an answer.

Sam also thinks he should talk to Mia or _someone_ , which Dean is not going to do, but he has learned that it’s best to just make vague, noncommittal noises. (“TBI can make depression worse,” Sams says, like a random observation he’s sharing about the weather, and not something Dean has received and ignored several medical opinions about by this point. Dean wishes someone would take away _Sam’s_ computer because the more Sam researches the more smothered Dean starts to feel).

Jody, Donna, Claire, that witchy Shawn kid they liberated from Georgia, whoever else happens to be hanging around on any given day, they all hover around him, ready to pull out a chair or grab his arm if he’s the least bit unsteady.

Cas...Cas is maybe the only one who isn’t hovering. He’s _there_ , of course. Dean wonders, sometimes, if there’s some vestige of his angelic senses left, some instinct inside him that still feels whatever pull used to draw him to Dean’s side, because whenever Dean does actually _need_ something, Cas is right there. Water, pain killers, escape from the hum of the rest of the bunker, quiet company - Cas is right there, always, but he’s distant too. Their banter falls flat, silences stretch a little too long and thin; there’s just a gap, something too hesitant and pained in the way Cas looks at him and then looks away. 

**_A month passes_ **

There are good days. Dean is _trying_. He does the exercises for his leg, and practices sign language and tries to fight down the empty gnawing in the back of his brain that drove him back to hunting to begin with. 

He masters navigating the kitchen on crutches, and throws himself into making dinner for whoever is in the bunker that day. Jack, Sam, Eileen, Cas, Dean, Rowena, and, apparently, Shawn actually live there, but there are usually at least four or five others passing through. Krissy swings by, and Other Charlie, who it still hurts a little to look at, and sometimes people he doesn’t even know, but he smiles and makes pancakes.

There are bad days. There are days when the light slanting under his door from the hallway is too much, and the everyday noises of the bunker echo in his skull. He lies in the dark with an ice pack over his eyes because he needs the pressure, the numbing chill, the complete dark, to fight back the nausea from the pounding in his head. 

Cas slips into the room, careful not to open the door too wide, and eases himself onto the other side of the bed, up against the headboard.

“Do you want company?” he asks quietly. Dean can only make a slight affirming noise, afraid to move too much because any movement at all threatens to exacerbate the pain. He doesn’t, really, want company in general, but it’s okay that Cas is there, offering silent comfort. Cas turns toward him and puts one hand on Dean’s shoulder, rubbing his thumb back and forth, a calming, grounding pressure, until Dean sleeps.

**_Two months pass_ **

He can walk without the crutches, and there are more good days than not. The thrum of all the people in the bunker is still too much, but it was too much before.

Physically, he’s getting there. He goes to his doctor like he’s supposed to and she says things like _just focus on one day at a time_ which is 1) unhelpful and 2) just about all he’s capable of anyway. He’s been reactive for so long, hanging on a knife’s edge of desperation and limited choices, that he’s a little afraid it’s all he’s ever been capable of. 

**_Three months pass_ **

His head feels better, and it’s his left leg that’s fucked, so he takes Baby out for the first time since The Accident. Sam goes with him on the pretense of brotherly bonding, but probably really because he still doesn’t totally trust Dean behind the wheel. That’s annoying, but Dean doesn’t fight him too hard; he doesn’t mind the company.

The sky is clear. The sun is bright and doesn’t threaten to trigger the aching pain behind his eyes. Dean rolls down the window to breathe in the dust of the road. Sam keeps shooting glances at him out of the corner of his eye.

“I’m fine, Sammy,” he says. “I know I’ve been saying that, even when it wasn’t totally true, but I’m really going to be okay. You can stop worrying so goddamn much.”

“I know you are,” Sam says. “You look good, Dean. It’s good to see you back behind the wheel.” He hesitates, and Dean knows there’s more.

“But?”

Sam sighs. “You know there are caveats to that, right? You’ll be okay if you don’t hit your head again, or break your leg, or put too much stress on your knee. You walked away from that, and nobody was real sure how.” He pauses and swallows hard. “We don’t have to kill ourselves for this fight anymore, wasn’t that the point?”

The point was saving the world. Living through it was always just kind of a nice-to-have. Sam won’t like that if Dean says it out loud. “What?” He says, half-smile, one eyebrow cocked, a mask of bravado Sam sees straight through. “Hunting’s a day job now?”

Sam shrugs with his whole body. “Yeah. Kinda.”

Dean’s a balls-to-the-wall, all-or-nothing kind of guy. He’s not sure he really knows how to do that.

**_Four months pass_ **

Dean makes a joke about taking out a vamp nest and Cas _loses his shit_.

The mood in the room turns fast, and they’re glaring at each other over the library table.

“You can’t be serious,” Cas growls, jaw hard and eyes flashing.

Dean takes one step backward, hands held up in surrender. “I wasn’t. But woah.”

“Really?” Cas sounds skeptical.

“I mean, not tomorrow. I figure eventually you gotta get back on the horse, right? Just...carefully.”

Cas stares at him, jaw clenched. “I don’t know if I can keep doing this,” he says, sounding kind of shocked by the realization.

And well, there it is. Dean’s been waiting for that. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I am not going vampire hunting with you.”

“Yeah, no one said you had to. No one said you had to come last time either, actually, if I remember how that went down.”

Cas makes a frustrated noise and stalks forward, putting both palms on the table so he can lean forward and stare Dean in the eye. “Do you know what it was like, in those moments in that house after you fell? In the hospital just waiting to see if you would wake up?”

Dean honest to God laughs, which is probably not the most appropriate reaction, but that’s where Cas wants to go with this? Does he _know_? Does he _fucking know_ what that’s like? Boy, does he ever.

“You mean the helplessness, while you just wait, and watch? I do, actually,” he bites out, a little mean. “Welcome to humanity, buddy.”

Cas stiffens with a sharp breath and rubs a hand over his face. “I don’t want to fight with you,” he says, more softly, and walks out of the room, leaving Dean to wonder what the _fuck _just happened.__

__\---_ _

__Dean finds Cas outside later, once he hopes they’ve both calmed down, in the camping chairs they have set up near the bunker door in a kind of make-shift porch. Dean makes his way over to Cas and steps awkwardly on a rock, his bad leg buckling under him and nearly taking him down. Cas starts, moving to get up to help him before Dean catches himself on the wall to hold himself up._ _

__That still happens a lot, and he knows it doesn’t do much for his argument that the accident wasn’t a career ending injury. He limps over to Cas and lowers himself into the other chair, left leg stretched out in front of him. Cas isn’t really looking at him, but he holds out his beer, and Dean takes it. It’s mostly full and mostly gone warm. Cas has been out here awhile._ _

__“Don’t tell Sam,” Dean says, taking a swig._ _

__Cas twists his mouth, looking out at the horizon. “I’m not here to monitor your decisions, Dean.”_ _

__They sit in silence for a moment. “Do you really want to quit?” Dean asks, quietly, handing the bottle back over, and tries not to hold his breath. He shifts to chance a look at Cas, and, Cas is looking at him now, head cocked like he’s trying to figure something out. It’s reminiscent of the old days._ _

__Cas sighs. “I’ve been thinking that maybe I overreacted. Maybe it’s not fair to actually ask you to do that,” he says, slowly._ _

__Dean shrugs. “I wasn’t talking about me.”_ _

__“You’re gonna go hunting alone? Is that it?” Cas is starting to sound pissed again, and that’s not what Dean came out here for. He shouldn’t keep pushing, but._ _

__“I’m a big boy, Cas. I can take care of myself. Been doing it a long time.” It’s not where he should go with this, and he knows it even as he says it. He shifts in his chair and a sharp pain jolts down his leg._ _

__Cas is staring at him incredulously now. He mumbles something under his breath that sounds like, “No, you haven’t.”_ _

__“What was that?”_ _

__Cas takes a deep breath, choosing his words. “I don’t know if I want to quit completely, Dean. But - _we_ \- should slow down. You’re so…” he breaks off, exasperated._ _

__“What? Old and broken?”_ _

__Cas lets out a huff of a laugh and rubs at his eyes. “I watched the Egyptians build the pyramids. Old is relative.”_ _

__Fair enough. Dean turns away. “Just broken then. Got it.”_ _

__Cas sighs, frustrated. “ _No_. Not old. Not broken. _Reckless_.”__

____“I don’t…” Dean starts, but Cas overrides him._ _ _ _

____“It’s my fault, really.”_ _ _ _

____“Cas, no. What?”_ _ _ _

____“Yes. I _have_ taken care of you, you know. For years. You’re used to an angel on your shoulder, and you operate like that’s still an option. A year ago you wouldn’t have had to deal with this.” He gestures to Dean’s leg. “I could…I have watched over you, and I have done everything to protect you, so you could protect the world, and we did _well_ ; I am _proud_ of us, but Dean, I’m just...this now. And neither of us is invincible. I keep thinking that it’s probably only the remnants of your God-given luck that means you’re alive right now, and I can’t…” He closes his eyes and inhaling deeply. _ _ _ _

____Dean knows that, and has been trying not to think about it; Sam made it clear enough. An inch to the right, and he’d be paralyzed, or worse. He holds out his hand until Cas hands the beer back over and waits._ _ _ _

____“Dean,” Cas starts again. “There’s just this now. There’s no more rising from the dead. There’s no more miracles. I can’t save you. I can’t heal you, and I have never felt so helpless, so can we just. Slow. Down.”_ _ _ _

____Dean just stares. “That’s not on you, man. I’m not your charge anymore.”_ _ _ _

____Cas huffs and pushes himself up out of his chair, stalking off a few feet toward where some visiting hunter’s truck is parked on the dirt road before whirling back around, eyes blazing. Dean’s reminded of sparks and the flash of lightning._ _ _ _

____“It’s not an _obligation_ ,” Cas says. He closes his eyes and when he opens them again, he just looks sad. “It was an honor,” he says, more quietly. “But you can’t keep on like this, still running into danger like what happens to you doesn’t matter.”_ _ _ _

____Dean’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with that. He opens his mouth to say Cas has always been the worst offender in that way, and then closes it again, because that’s not true anymore. Cas has been so, so careful, this whole time, and still nearly got taken down by that hodag._ _ _ _

____“Is that why you’re so careful now? No more second chances?”_ _ _ _

____Cas shrugs. “Before we left last time, Sam said to take care of you. And he said one way I do that is by taking care of myself too, that you’re not...ok...when I’m gone. And I’m trying.”_ _ _ _

____Dean flinches. That’s not fair, really. Cas has sacrificed enough for all of them, for a long time. “He shouldn’t have put that on you.”_ _ _ _

____“He didn’t put anything on me. You’re not hearing me. He told me something I needed to know, that I should have heard from you years ago. I did everything for you, for this family, for _our_ cause because I wanted to, and I believed in it and us. I would do it again. Every time I left you, every choice I made was because I believed it was _right_. And if what Sam says is true, if the best way to protect you now is to stay here, alive and with you, then that’s what I have wanted most all along anyway. It’s not a hardship, Dean. It’s not a sacrifice, it’s what I _want_ , but I will not watch you commit suicide by poltergeist.”_ _ _ _

____They stare at each other. One beat. Two. Dean gets up, gingerly, and makes his way over to where Cas is standing near the truck._ _ _ _

____“I’m not trying to die, Cas,” he says, “...that’s not… I don’t want…”_ _ _ _

____“What _do_ you want?”_ _ _ _

____Dean just shakes his head. He wishes he had a clear answer to that question. It’s been so long since he’s done anything but run on instinct, from crisis to crisis. If he’s ever even done anything else._ _ _ _

____He goes with honesty, because it’s what he’s got left and what the hell. “I want you to stay with me,” he says; he may not know what he wants on a grander scale, but that’s something he’s wanted and been unsure how to ask for for years._ _ _ _

____Cas jerks back, surprised, a little thrown. “I really don’t know what I ever did to make you think that, given a real choice, I was going to do anything else.”_ _ _ _

____Dean could give him a list. They probably need to talk about that; they probably also need to unpack Cas’s tirade about his responsibility for Dean’s well being too while they’re at it, but that’s a lot of talking and he already feels like an exposed nerve. He rubs at his eyes and shakes his head, looking out over the hood of the truck toward the trees._ _ _ _

____When he glances back, Cas is just staring at him. “Okay,” Cas says softly, “When are you going to forgive me for the deal?”_ _ _ _

____Dean closes his eyes and breathes deep. He feels Cas’s hand on his arm pulling him around._ _ _ _

____He turns so they’re face-to-face, and looks up to meet Cas’s eyes, wide and searching._ _ _ _

____He sighs. “I’m not mad about the deal, Cas.” And he’s not, really - again, he’s a self-aware hypocrite. He’s holding on to the knowledge of it, and thinking about it leaves a pit in his stomach that keeps him awake at night, but he wouldn’t say he’s _angry_ so much as still scared. “I’ve been there. Basically everyone I know has been there. It’s like a right of passage. But I am...terrified that I didn’t know. Of losing you like that. Again. And I just wouldn’t have known. That was something _I_ needed to know.” _ _ _ _

____He starts a little when he feels Cas’s hand drag down his forearm, until their fingers brush, but he doesn’t pull away, letting Cas loosely take his hand._ _ _ _

____“You did,” Cas says. “I should have told you. And if I had it to do over again, I would. I thought true contentment was a distant dream anyway, and I thought I was protecting you, but maybe that wasn’t the way.”_ _ _ _

____“It wasn’t,” Dean confirms. He inhales deeply and looks out over Cas's shoulder. When he chances eye contact, Cas’s head is cocked again, studying him._ _ _ _

____“Is that what you’ve been scared of?” Cas asks, sounding stunned; Dean watches helplessly, flayed open by Cas’s gaze, as the pieces drop into place. “I wondered what was…” Cas pauses and squeezes Dean’s hand. “Listen to me - all the best things I have known of humanity I have known because of you. I have no desire to experience them anywhere else or with anyone else. You have to believe I want to be here, and all I can do is promise I won’t leave you by choice.”_ _ _ _

____Dean closes his eyes against the intensity in Cas’s eyes and nods._ _ _ _

____“Okay,” Cas says. He turns their hands, bringing them up so they’re clasped against his chest, pulling Dean closer so he can feel the rise and fall of Cas’s breath under their joined hands. “But Dean, what I’m also saying to you is that there are no guarantees. There never were, we both always knew that, but I have never felt it like this. I’ve never felt time with any sense of immediacy like I do now. I have never been so aware of it passing. Chuck’s gone; this world is free, but we don’t know what that really means. We don’t know what that did. We don’t know much more than anyone else, not anymore, and we have what? Forty years if we’re lucky? This is it. So _please_ , I need you to be more careful with the time we have.”_ _ _ _

____He’s breathing a little heavy when he finishes, just searching, and Dean watches him stunned, before gathering enough of himself to bring his free hand up to rub his thumb against the stubble of Cas’s jaw._ _ _ _

____“I want you to stay with me,” Cas says, glancing down at Dean’s lips, and then back, blue eyes blown wide, over a decade of aching tension and pain and love condensed into this moment._ _ _ _

____“Fuck, okay,” Dean says, blinking against the wetness in his eyes. He squares his shoulders and pulls Cas in by the back of the neck and kisses him._ _ _ _

____The world tilts and slides and then something long missing clicks into place. It’s soft at first; Cas gives a sharp intake of breath when their lips meet. He breaks away for a moment to stare at Dean a little wild eyed, and then edges forward, just ghosting their lips together before he seems to get his bearings and curls his hand possessively around Dean’s hip to pull him closer, crowding him up against the side of the truck and kissing him back, slow and hungry._ _ _ _

____It’s not a chick flick moment, it’s the climax of the whole fucking chick flick. The sun is setting behind them; Dean is crying. There should probably be orchestral music swelling in the background, or maybe Led Zeppelin. He pulls Cas close and just holds on._ _ _ _

____\---_ _ _ _

____Dean’s not sure how long they stand there kissing, and there’s a moment where he’s seriously tempted to just pull Cas into the bed of the truck, but somehow they make it back to Dean’s room, miraculously not running into any of the other nosy inhabitants of the bunker on the way._ _ _ _

____They lose some momentum in the transition. Dean sits on the bed, and turns to look at Cas, just staring at him, leaning against the closed door. His hair is messed up from where Dean ran his fingers through it, and he’s still flushed, lips kiss swollen. He swallows and Dean watches the line of his throat. It’s intimate and quiet in the soft lamp lights._ _ _ _

____“Hey,” Dean says, gently, “You still with me?”_ _ _ _

____“Always,” Cas says, and Dean shudders at the intensity in his voice. “I think I’m just processing that this is actually happening.” He quirks a wry grin. “This isn’t where I thought we’d end up tonight a few hours ago. I was starting to wonder if we’d ever end up here at all.”_ _ _ _

____“You were really mad at me.”_ _ _ _

____“I was really worried about you. And a little mad at you.”_ _ _ _

____“I know. I’m sorry. Come here.”_ _ _ _

____Dean knows how long this has been coming, and he’s shaking a little with the surreality of it too, without Cas’s hands on him to ground him._ _ _ _

____Cas crosses the room to sit next to him on the bed so they’re touching, the line of his thigh warm against Dean’s. Dean leans forward to press their lips together and Cas kisses him back, gentle and devastating; he lays one warm hand on Dean’s shoulder, gripping tight, and Dean feels it through his whole body._ _ _ _

____Dean breaks apart to tip their heads together._ _ _ _

____“This is what you want?” He asks. He knows Cas is here with him, but, the last half hour and the fact this is far from casual not withstanding, Cas has been generally unimpressed by, and frankly mostly uninterested in, sex for as long as Dean’s known him._ _ _ _

____Cas tips his head to press a light kiss to Dean’s lips. “ _Yes_ , if it’s what you want. I don’t need this part to be happy here with you. But I _want_ all of you.”_ _ _ _

____“Jesus,” Dean breathes out, a little floored. When they opened the floodgates, they opened all of them. “You just keep...come here.”_ _ _ _

____He surges forward, kissing Cas again, bringing one hand up to cup his jaw, fingers curling in the back of his hair, where it’s getting long. Cas makes a noise low in his throat and pushes Dean backward, until they’re lying down, Cas straddling Dean with one strong thigh on either side of Dean’s hips, careful not to put weight on his bad leg. They’re still just kissing, fully clothed, but it’s one of the more erotic experiences of Dean’s life. Dean can feel Cas against his hip, a hard line through two layers of denim._ _ _ _

____When Dean really let himself think about what this would be like, he assumed there would be some hesitance and uncertainty on Cas’s part. That’s not really there, but Cas _is_ careful, almost reverent, in the way he touches him, in the way he skims his hands over Dean’s back, up through his hair, like he’s awed a little bit that he gets to touch. _ _ _ _

____Dean gets that. What Dean didn’t realize when he let himself think about what this would be like is that he’s never really had this kind of sex before either, and that he would also be a little out of his element, wanting to touch everywhere at once and spinning with it, overcome._ _ _ _

____Dean’s had a lot of great sex with both men and women, and he’s had a decent amount of great sex with people he’s loved deeply - Cassie, Lee, Benny, Lisa, a few others through the years. But those relationships all started from one night stands or blowing off steam after a hunt, and feelings grew from there. He’s never had first time sex with someone he was already in love with. He’s never had I-love-you sex with someone whose body he didn’t already know inside and out._ _ _ _

____Basically, he’s never culminated over a decade of simmering sexual tension before and he’s not totally sure what to do with his hands._ _ _ _

____He pushes Cas’s flannel down over his shoulders, and then gets his hands underneath Cas t-shirt, up against bare skin. Cas makes a soft sound against Dean’s mouth, and breaks the kiss long enough to tug his shirt up over his head, and then slip his hands under the hem of Dean’s henley, rucking it up until Dean sits up enough to pull it off and discard it over the side of the bed before leaning back up to catch Cas’s mouth again._ _ _ _

____Then they’re skin-to-skin, and that’s better, heat and warmth everywhere they’re touching. Dean gets his hands down between them to fumble with the buttons on Cas’s jeans while Cas noses up his neck, sucking a bruising kiss below his jaw line that makes Dean moan._ _ _ _

____“What do you want?” Cas asks, low in his ear._ _ _ _

____What a question. Dean wants to be marked all over. He wants to be _branded_._ _ _ _

____“Just get these off,” he huffs trying to push Cas’s jeans down his hips and go for his own zipper at the same time._ _ _ _

____Cas laughs at him a little, affectionate, and Dean could live in that sound._ _ _ _

____Cas stands up long enough to shed his jeans and underwear. Dean takes that moment to push his own jeans down his thighs, careful when his knee twinges. Cas spots the wince and his eyes soften. He climbs back on the bed and kneels between Dean’s spread legs, dropping a kiss to the side of his knee, just above the surgical scar, and then another toward the inside of Dean’s thigh, close to where he’s aching._ _ _ _

____And wow, does Dean want Cas’s mouth there, but he is also pretty sure he doesn’t want to ever stop kissing._ _ _ _

____They are so sappy. They’re going to be so gross after this. Dean’s never going to want to keep his hands to himself again._ _ _ _

____“Hey, get up here,” he says, palming Cas’s shoulder. Cas rests his chin on Dean’s hip and grins up at him wickedly in a way that makes Dean’s heart thud in his throat._ _ _ _

____“Are you sure?”_ _ _ _

____“Oh, Jesus, yes.”_ _ _ _

____Cas crawls up Dean’s body to claim his mouth again. “I meant what do you _want_ ,” he asks between kisses._ _ _ _

____“I know what you meant; just kiss me.”_ _ _ _

____Dean definitely has some creative ideas about how this could go, but he does not want to think about logistics right now, and his leg probably can’t take anything strenuous. Besides, he’s so overwhelmed he doesn’t need much more than this. He licks a stripe up the column of Cas’s throat and then grinds up against his thigh, and Cas breaks off a moan at the pressure. They are touching _everywhere_ , and that’s just fine. It’s perfect._ _ _ _

____“Next time I want you in me,” he breathes urgently in Cas’s ear and Cas shudders. “But for now, just…” He gets a hand back in between them so he can get his fist as best he can around both of them, jerking them together. It’s wet and slick from where they’re both hard and leaking._ _ _ _

____Cas ruts up against him, this slow, dirty slide, and there’s no way Dean is lasting long like this. He’s been hard since they kissed out by the truck, and all of the feelings talk just worked him up more. (They are going to be SO gross, and probably indecent, forever after this. Cas is going to say “nice shot” or “that shirt matches your eyes,” and Dean is going to drop to his knees)._ _ _ _

____Cas slips one hand down between them to slot his fingers with Dean’s, making a tunnel, tight and hot, for both of them to fuck into, and then they’re moving together in a building, aching rhythm._ _ _ _

____Yeah, this is not going to take long._ _ _ _

____Dean comes like that, with Cas murmuring what might be Enochian low in his ear, from the slowest, most romantic, hottest mutual handjob of his life that leaves him shaking and boneless. Cas follows within seconds, biting down on the meat of Dean’s shoulder and jerking them both through it until they’re exhausted and oversensitive._ _ _ _

____Simultaneous orgasms. Is that what a decade of simmering sexual tension gets you? Awesome. Dean’s into it._ _ _ _

____Cas kisses his shoulder, on the mark he probably left, and then slumps back against the pillows. “I didn’t actually know sex could be like that,” he says, sounding breathless._ _ _ _

____Dean grins at him. “Honestly? I’m not sure that I did either. And we’re just getting started, right?”_ _ _ _

____Dean means that last part to be suggestive, not questioning, but his heart still flutters in his chest when Cas reaches out to rub a thumb over his cheekbone and says, “I hope so.”_ _ _ _

____Dean rolls over to slide one arm over Cas’s stomach and let Cas pull him close. They breath in the silence of the room for a moment, Dean’s thumb trailing absent circles along Cas’s hip. There’s still something more. “I love you,” he says quietly. “I said a lot of things earlier, but I didn’t say that.”_ _ _ _

____Cas kisses his hair. “I did know that. I just wasn’t sure it was enough.” He pauses and then continues, more quietly, “I have loved you for so long. Before I even understood what that meant.”_ _ _ _

____“It’s more than enough,” Dean says, and lets himself float in the soothing pressure of Cas’s hand rubbing his shoulder._ _ _ _

____\---_ _ _ _

____Dean’s not sure how much time passes. At some point, Cas turned out the light._ _ _ _

____Cas’s breath is even at his back, and he might be asleep. Dean’s drifting himself, but there’s something here in the liminal space tugging at the edge of his mind. All night, Cas has been asking him what he _wants_ , like that question has ever had an easy answer. Like this isn’t the first time in his life it’s even mattered. _ _ _ _

____“I want to quit,” he says, quietly, into the darkness. He’s not sure Cas is awake to hear him until Cas stiffens for a moment, and then trails his hand up from where it’s resting against Dean’s stomach to link their fingers together and squeeze. He pulls their joined hands tight against Dean’s chest, resting over his heart._ _ _ _

____Cas drops a kiss to Dean’s shoulder and says, “Okay.”_ _ _ _

____“And I don’t want to stay here and help run the hunter army.” The Men of Letters path is Sam’s, not his. Sam’s building something strong here, something good. But no one ends up in this life without trauma and Dean can’t have the responsibility of crafting the next generation of kids into weapons, even if it’s what they want and need, even under Sam’s new more nuanced and ethical hunting ethos._ _ _ _

____“Okay.” Cas kisses the back of his neck._ _ _ _

____“But I can’t...walk away completely. I don’t want to pretend I’m not who I am and I don’t know what I know.” He’ll never really be a civilian. And what he _wants_ is his family - all of them - within his reach. He wants to still be right there when - anytime - Sam needs him. He wants Cas, like this, for as long as they have, without taking stupid risks that might shorten that time. He wants to learn sign language for Eileen and teach Jack to fish and make sure Cas is never too far away from Jack or Claire. Hell, he wants to go to the bar every week with Rowena. _ _ _ _

____He wants some way to honor where they’ve been and the life they’ve built, because it’s theirs, and, after everything, he is proud of where they’ve landed. There are connections to be built and people that matter beyond the research and the fighting - the caretakers - Jesse and Cesar and doctors like Rebecca and Mia. There’s a whole other side to this life._ _ _ _

____“Okay,” Cas murmurs, and holds him tight._ _ _ _

____\---_ _ _ _

____The next morning Sam and Dean are having coffee in the kitchen when Cas wanders in wearing Dean’s robe and kisses the top of Dean’s head on his way to the coffee pot. Sam makes eye contact with Dean and holds up his coffee mug in a toast with a smirk._ _ _ _

____\---_ _ _ _

____They open Mary’s Roadhouse on the outskirts of Lebanon._ _ _ _

____The design of the inside is a tribute to Ellen and Jo, and if Dean thinks about Lee a little when he looks at the bar, well, that’s just a reminder of what not to do._ _ _ _

____Cas and Dean move in upstairs. They teach Jack and Shawn to tend the bar and hire another recovering shifter friend of Mia’s in the kitchen. Patience moves in for a while when she’s working with Rowena. Dean and Cas keep open lines of communication with Jesse and Cesar and the loose network of hunter roadhouses they’ve uncovered dotting the country._ _ _ _

____(“We’re the research hub, you’re the gossip hub,” Sam says._ _ _ _

____“It’s not gossip; it’s _information_ ,” Dean retorts._ _ _ _

____It’s often gossip, but the useful kind. The kind people spill when they’re secure, among friends.)_ _ _ _

____One day, about a year in, Sam puts his elbows on the counter and leans in over his burger. “There’s rumors of some werewolf activity up in Illinois.”_ _ _ _

____Behind the bar, Dean cocks his head and leans his hip against the ledge, tossing the bar towel over his shoulder. “And? That sounds like a you problem.”_ _ _ _

____Sam nods. “Yeah, maybe. And Claire and Derek are up there checking it out, but I was talking to Garth, and the way it was described was amateur and messy, definitely newly turned, but also...maybe a kid.”_ _ _ _

____“Okay…”_ _ _ _

____“Bess is pregnant again, so Garth can’t go. Derek and Claire are the shoot first ask questions later type, so I thought...”_ _ _ _

____Cas enters at that point from the storeroom._ _ _ _

____“What’s going on?” he asks, coming up behind Dean, a little too close so Dean can lean his weight against him. (Dean was right; they have not stopped being gross. It’s great)._ _ _ _

____“Sam’s talking about a hunt,” Dean says, and Cas raises one eyebrow, questioning._ _ _ _

____Sam shakes his head. “No, not like a _hunt_. Like a scared kid. I was thinking maybe maybe you guys go out there and ask questions first and hopefully shoot never?”_ _ _ _

____Dean pours another beer and slides it over to Sam, taking the moment to think._ _ _ _

____“So you want us to go investigate werewolf rehabilitation?”_ _ _ _

____Sam shrugs. “Yeah. Something like that. Aren’t you the touchy feely one now?”_ _ _ _

____Dean holds up one finger in Sam’s face. “Hey. Shut it.” He turns to Cas. “What do you think? For old time’s sake?”_ _ _ _

____Cas cocks his head at Sam. “I think we can handle that.” He slides his arm around Dean’s waist and presses a kiss to his temple. “I’ll make sure Shawn has things handled here. You pack and we’ll leave in the morning.”_ _ _ _

____By 8 am they’re on the road, with something solid and established to come back to._ _ _ _

____There are still bad days. There are days when Dean’s leg aches in the rain or when he can’t quite bring himself to get out of bed. There are days when Cas gets quiet and withdrawn, starts pouring shots of whiskey behind the bar and telling Dean about all the memories, fading away._ _ _ _

____But there’s also the Impala and the open road; real freedom laid out before them, and family grounding every choice._ _ _ _

____Dean is glad to be living through the epilogue. He turns up the radio, twines his hand with Cas’s on the seat between them, and points Baby toward Chicago._ _ _ _

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks, if you made it this far. When I left _Supernatural_ fandom in 2013, I was pretty sure I was done for good. But season 15 pulled me back in _hard_ and now here we are, with this nonsense and the longest thing I've finished and posted since bandom bigbang in 2008. 
> 
> I didn't even really write fic when I was in this fandom the first time. Never say never, friends.


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